Full Circle
by Mauve Alert
Summary: Here they are, after the end of the world, right back where they began so many centuries ago: the Doctor and Susan and their stolen TARDIS, out in the universe and on the lam. AUish.


_A/N-_ I was thinking (dangerous, that) and this idea came to me. I've got way too many other projects going to make it into a full-length affair, but I couldn't resist writing this little one-shot. I may return to it if I ever have time or if the plot bunny completely takes over my brain, the latter being much more likely than the former.

Melpomene is the Greek muse of tragedy.

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_Full Circle_

The very first thing he becomes aware of is the silence, the nightmarish, empty silence, a hollow spot in his head where his people should be. It gapes open like an unstitched wound.

Gritting his teeth - they feel odd in his mouth, different - he looks past the pain and the emptiness and beyond it there is the faintest hint of hope - a single, tiny whisper in the silence, dwarfed by the huge void surrounding it.

He sees nothing but blackness because he hasn't opened his eyes yet.

Something cool touches his forehead, and after a moment he realizes that it is a hand. He gathers his courage and opens his eyes. It takes a moment for his vision to focus, but it does. He can see. How strange.

He doesn't recognize the face leaning over his, but that doesn't matter; he feels her mind and it is oh, so familiar. "Hello," he tries to say, and finds that his vocal cords are not quite operational yet. He grunts, swallows, clears his throat. Tries again, with more coherent results. "Susan."

Her lips tug up in a failed attempt at a smile. "Grandfather."

"You've regenerated again," he says. His voice sounds strange and foreign. Odd. "You ought to be more careful." He hopes his tone is disapproving.

"Useful advice," she says. Her face is tragedy given shape, all dramatic angles and sharp edges, pale skin and black hair and red lips. Her eyes are weary gray, the color of ashes. "If only you would follow it."

Her meaning sinks in slowly. "I've lost another, then?" He lets out a despairing sound. "And I'd just gotten used to the last one."

"This is your ninth," says Susan, somewhat reproachfully. He used to take care of her, he remembers. When did they switch roles? "In, what, twelve centuries? You're speeding through them."

"It hardly matters now, does it?" Susan doesn't respond. He is so very very tired. "Might as well tell me. What do I look like?"

And how surreal it is, to lie here on a bed that he doesn't remember getting into, having a rational conversation with his granddaughter when his home and his family and his people never existed because of him.

Susan regards him for a long moment. At last, she says, "You have ears like an elephant's."

The sound he makes could be a laugh or a choke or a sob. "Remember elephants, Susan?"

Tears are running down her cheeks and she lets out a despairing giggle. "Elephants are unforgettable. Isn't that what they say?"

"No, it's 'elephants never forget,'" he corrects, and starts to laugh. History has been rewritten and the blood of two races is eating away at his hands and he and his granddaughter are talking about elephants.

He laughs and it hurts more than a thousand regenerations, and Susan rests her head on his chest and cries, and at some point she starts laughing and he starts crying, and they go on like that for awhile before lapsing into silence.

He rests a hand on her neck and feels her double-pulse beating wildly beneath the skin; he breathes in and for the first time in a hundred years she doesn't smell of war, of fire and death and fear. "We're alive," he says finally.

"I guess so," Susan says.

"How did you get here?" They said goodbye - how long ago was it? - and he'd told her not to come. He would kill them all, he'd said, for the universe's sake, but he would do it alone and die alone like a murderer should. And yet somehow here they both are, and the TARDIS is thrumming all around him, all three of them alive. It shouldn't be possible and yet somehow it is.

Susan reaches for his hand and holds it tightly. "I didn't want to die alone," she says, with the tiniest of sniffles. "I stowed away." She laughs a little at that, and so does he. So much has changed since he discovered his little granddaughter hiding in a kitchen cupboard, refusing to be left behind as he ran from Gallifrey in a stolen ship.

He closes his eyes and pulls himself together, boxing away the pain for now. He reaches out for the TARDIS. She is hurting, battered and a little bit broken, but still she finds some strength and comfort to send him through their bond. _Thank you, old girl_.

He doesn't know how they lived. It doesn't really matter to him, the _how_ or the _why_. Once upon a time, not knowing would have eaten away at him like a cancer, and he would have dug and dug and dug until he found out. Now he just wants to put his head down and die, over and over again. Five suicides, and then it would be over. . . .

No, he can't do that, or won't. He'll just keep going, keep moving like he always does, never stopping, never sleeping and never dwelling too long on the emptiness inside his head. He doesn't need to sleep that much, the war has taught him; he hasn't slept since Arcadia fell.

He can carry on as if the war never happened. Technically, it didn't, except in his own head and Susan's, and when there's no evidence that it happened, who's to say they aren't mad and dreaming some crazy shared dream? If he could ignore the emptiness in his head he could pretend that nothing has changed, that Gallifrey is still out there, that his people are still alive.

He's always been good at pretending.

He opens his eyes and sits up, discovers that he is in the infirmary. He hasn't a clue how he got there. "What happened, Susan?"

His voice is calm, rational. Surreal. The Time Lords and the Daleks and Gallifrey are all gone, erased from history. The war, which had never seemed to end, is over, and he is talking to his granddaughter.

Susan is checking his vitals, now. Clinical. "I woke up," she says, equally calm. Her tone is clipped, distant. "I found that I had regenerated. I felt nothing. I decided that I ought to find you. I did, and discovered that you had regenerated as well. Your nose was bleeding. I brought you here, did what I could, and waited for you to wake up. I don't know how long I waited. "

She got rid of his old clothes, too, he notices, unsurprised by the flimsy hospital gown he's now wearing. She stopped being squeamish about such things a century ago, when she became a medic on the front lines. They'd started calling her "doctor" at about the same time that he'd dropped the title.

He reaches out, feels for her hand, grips it tightly as if he is falling. Perhaps he is. "When did you start taking care of me, Susan?"

"When you started needing me to," she replies. Her face is averted, still staring at the monitors, but she squeezes his hand in return, as if to belie her detached tone. "Do you remember your regeneration or anything leading up to it?"

He searches his memory. It makes his head hurt even more; his memories are confused, hazy. "No," he answers at last.

"That's fairly common," Susan says, entering the information in the computer. A hint of resigned amusement creeps into her words. "Especially considering the patient. You don't regenerate well, Grandfather." He doesn't reply and she continues, "Do you know how long you were unconscious?"

The answer should come to him immediately; the internal clock of a Time Lord is unrivalled by any other timekeeping devise in the universe, except perhaps by the TARDIS'. But the answer doesn't come, and the more he tries to figure it out the more confused he becomes. "No. Time. . . feels muddled."

"I'm having trouble with that also," Susan admits. "I'm hypothesizing that this is a result of a particularly stressful regeneration-"

"No."

Two aristocratic eyebrows arch. "No?"

"It's not just us. It's Time itself - just been rewritten and trying to sort itself out," he explains. He's good at explaining. It distracts him. "The war nearly ripped space-time apart. Then the Daleks were wiped from existence, the Time Lords were wiped from existence, and the war never happened, except it did, except it didn't, and somehow we're still here even though we don't exist. It's such a mess of paradoxes, no wonder Time's confused. It's a miracle the whole of creation hasn't imploded just to avoid the headache."

Something glints in Susan's new eyes, a hint of something still smouldering among the ashes. "I imagine there's fractures? Little rips, here and there, in the fabric of the universe?"

He picks up on her thoughts. _Adventure_. Running away from Gallifrey and their people once again, as if they have a choice this time, as if they can go back. Roaming the universe, fixing little problems then swanning off to someplace new. It's been so long that he isn't sure that he remembers how, but there's nothing else left, and when there's nothing left you grab what you can and cling to it, a shipwrecked Odysseus clinging to a broken mast.

"I think your room is still around somewhere," he muses.

Susan shakes her head and avoids his gaze as she continues punching information into the computer. He's fairly certain that she's only using the computer as an excuse not to look at him. "I want a new one," she says, and adds lamely, "I can't be bothered to dust."

"Fair enough."

Several lines of Gallifreyan script flow across Susan's computer screen. She studies it for a moment, then sighs. "You're fine," she says. "If you didn't have that ridiculous accent I wouldn't even know you've just regenerated."

He doesn't feel fine. He hasn't felt fine since he stormed into the Council Chamber and signed up for endless years of blood and death, mind-numbing fear and loss, so much loss, and all of the darkest horrors that the universe has to offer. The emptiness in his head is driving him mad and the blood on his hands is burning into his fingers.

_Fine_. He's forgotten what it feels like and he doubts he'll ever remember.

Susan is watching him, waiting for a response, for anything. He feels so very tired. "Just go away, Susan." The words are harsh; he is a harsh man, now, and it's not the result of the regeneration. He's lost kindness, and mercy, just as he's lost the title _Doctor_ and all of its implications. Once upon a time, he was a healer, a teacher, or at least tried to be. Now he's just a bitter old man, a tired killer with dirty hands and broken hearts.

She doesn't react; cruelty stopped surprising her a long time ago. Her callouses are a century old. "You ought to rest," she says, neutrally. "Stay in bed awhile longer. I'll check on you." With that, she rises and heads for the door. Her movements are stiff, pained.

Little spears of remorse stab at his gut. "Susan," he calls.

She turns at the door. "Yes?"

"How are you?" It is a stupid question but he needs to ask it, because her answer is one of the very few things left that matter.

She regards him for a long moment, pensive, before answering finally, "Breathing."

With that, she is gone and he is alone with his demons.

Each pound of his hearts aches in his chest. It feels as though the whole of the Void is inside his head; his skull is full of maddening nothingness. The Time and Space are twisting and distorting around him. His people are gone, they're not there in his head, and it's his fault because he killed them, and it couldn't hurt more if he'd just carved out both of his hearts. Breathing has suddenly become quite impossible.

Never in his life has he felt so _alone_. Perhaps this is what killed him - the sheer pain of being severed from his people.

With an effort, he pulls himself out of the bed and stumbles into the corridor, hospital gown flapping about his legs. Distantly, he reaches for the TARDIS and thinks _Susan_. It won't be so bad when he's with Susan.

His ship, bless her old heart, takes him right to the wardrobe, where Susan is fingering his old, ragged scarf with fascination. "I've been waiting for you," she comments as he leans against a column, panting for air and trying to box away the pain. "Did you actually _wear_ this? In _public_?"

"Don't act surprised," he grits out, though already her presence is helping to calm him down. It's not much, just a tiny whisper dwarfed by the looming absence of Gallifrey in his head, but it's something. It's company. "I know Romana showed you pictures."

_Oh, Romana._ _Why did you choose me kill you? Why did you ask this of me?_

"I didn't quite believe it until now." Susan says, casting him an amused glance. "I told you to stay in bed."

"I don't need any more rest." It's not quite true. He's weary to his bones and wants nothing more than to curl up in a real bed and sleep, real sleep without nightmares, for the first time since Arcadia fell. But he can't say that, not to Susan. He's supposed to be the strong one. He's supposed to take care of her.

Instead, he says, "I need some new clothes."

She gives him that subdued, distant little smile, and spends a little time making outlandish suggestions for a new outfit. She selects a leopard-fur coat, a Roman toga, and - with sly, subtle humor - an 1890s-style suit with a floppy mauve tie.

In the end, he goes with dark, practical, plain - no more fripperies for him, not anymore. Under Susan's critical eye, he chooses several jumpers in gloomy colors, heavy boots, and the sorriest, most beat-up leather jacket he's ever seen.

The mirror reflects a hard, tired man with enormous ears. He wonders when he got so old.

Susan stands at his side, a dark-haired Melpomene dressed in mourning black. "We've come a long way," she says, staring at the mirror, "haven't we, Doctor?"

He goes cold at her use of the title. "Don't, Susan."

Ignoring the rebuke, Susan pulls something out of her pocket and slaps it into his hand. "I rescued this from the trash can," she tells him.

He stares down at the sonic screwdriver. He made it right before the war started, on a rainy day; it broke decades ago and he never bothered to try to fix it. It's the Doctor's tool, not a soldier's, and he hadn't wanted the reminder of what he'd once been.

Susan must have repaired it; the tip is glowing bright blue and it looks much less battered than he remembers. How long has it been, since he could save the universe armed with nothing but a grin, his wits, and a sonic screwdriver? Does he even remember how?"

"Doctor." Susan's voice cuts into him, a fresh razor-edge of pain to drag him back to reality.

He meets her gaze, not protesting her use of the old name.

"The TARDIS needs repairs," she tells him evenly.

He shrugs. "What are we waiting for, then?"

He offers her his hand, needing that physical contact. Grandfather, granddaughter. She takes it, and here they are, after the end of the world, right back where they began so many centuries ago: the Doctor and Susan and their stolen TARDIS, out in the universe and on the lam.

They turn their backs on the mirror and go off in search of the console room.

-FIN -

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Thoughts? Comments? Please share. 


End file.
